Anita
Anita Radcliffe is the English teacher, spirit walker and mother of Milo Thatch. Her abilities include shape-shifting, weather control and plant simulation. She has been married twice, and has an older daughter, but her wherabouts are unknown. Both of her previous husbands are dead, the first at the hands of the second, and the second as a result of his violence towards Anita and Milo . Her personality is cold, quiet and generally angry. She doesn't share her emotions well, and is prone to lashing out by way of compensation. She finds it hard to open up, and this bitterness has caused her relationship with her son Milo to be very troubled. Background Anita is a spirit walker, which is similar to a skin walker but with subtle differences. The changes that she causes are to do with her thoughts and emotions. She is able to shapeshift, but her shifted form is a projection of her spirit, and so appears as her inner self. This means it is subject to change - if a very traumatic event takes place, a spirit form can change. Anita's spirit form is currently a lioness (Zira, from The Lion King II), with notable "mean" looking features - small narrowed eyes, sharp jawline, small ears. This form represents Anita's bitterness and anger, which has become a large part of who she is. Spirit walkers are very close to nature, and so have abilities relation to that as well. They are able to control the weather - Anita can do this, but again it reflects her emotions, so it is usually storms or rain. She is also able to communicate to a certain extent with plants and the living earth, encouraging them to grow in a certain way. Her love of the English language is one of the defining points of her character, and she is rarley seen without a book or two in her hand. She is scrupulously organised, and is never late. Anita is something of a perfectionist, and expects everything to be done very neatly - if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well, so to speak. She is also very no-nonsense, and is hard to trick, thanks to her being very observant. She is very strict with her son Milo , as she now finds it difficult to be gentle with him. As a result, Milo is very academic, and acheives very high grades. Her surname, Radcliffe, is her maiden name. After marrying Miguel, she became Mrs Thatch, but after becoming widowed and remarrying she became Anita Smith. After her second husband died, Anita returned to her maiden name in an attempt to forget her past. Her son keeps his father's surname. History Early life to Milo's birth Anita's early life was fairly uneventful - she lived with her parents on a farm in the Cotswolds for the first eighteen years of her life, before gaining a place at Goldsmiths University in London. She had learnt from her parents to hide her gifts, and so had a fairly average university experience. When she was working her first job after university as a waitress in a cafe, she met the shapeshifter Miguel Thatch, at the age of 23. They realised immediatley that they shared supernatural gifts, and eventually they were engaged, and married a year later, aged 25 (Miguel) and 24 (Anita). She had her first child at the age of 25, a baby girl called Annie, who was also a shapeshifter. Three years later she had Milo, another shapeshifter, and the family settled down in her parents farmhouse - her father had passed away shortly after Annie's birth, and her mother decided to move to her childhood home of Durham. Miguel's Death When the couple had been living in the farmhouse for several years, both being open about their abilities, tension began to build between them and the local village. Eventually, one night while the family was shifted into their animal forms, a mob made their way to the farm. Anita and the children managed to get away, but she and Annie were seperated from Milo, who ran to try and save his father. Anita went back for him after telling Annie to hide, and managed to save Milo. Tragically, she couldn't stop Miguel being killed, and had to watch from a distance as he was thrown from a cliff. The mob left to burn the farmhouse, so Anita, Milo and Annie went and could say goodbye, briefly. Anita used her powers to make an olive tree grow over Miguel's body, so that he could be remembered and not just left. Roger Smith Anita, Annie and Milo lived with Roger Smith, one of the local bachelors, for safety. Anita decided that they should try to blend in, and having lost the farm, they needed a place to live. A solution, although not an ideal one, provided itself, in the form of Roger. He had been one of the mob, and although Anita was very nervous of humans, she had little choice - he had taken a fancy to her, and they were desperate. Once she had agreed to marry him, however, he began to show his true colours. His desire for Anita stopped him from killing her, even in spite of the family's abilities, but it didn't stop him behaving hatefully to her children. When he demanded that Annie be sent away, Anita and Milo were powerless to stop him - even if they had used their powers, they would have had to fight the entire village, and then go on the run. Neithr of them knew where Roger had sent her, so they couldn't go after her even if Roger had allowed them. Anita and Milo both suffered violence from Roger for nearly a decade, until things came to a head. Since Milo was becoming older, Anita was secretly trying to teach him how to use his powers, but Roger got wind of this. He began to threaten Anita, and wanted to send Milo away as well. As he began hurting Anita again, something inside of her snapped, and she summoned a lightening bolt through the window, which killed him. Relationships Silver- Anita gets along well with the shapeshifter, there may even be a romantic interest. Tulio- Their interaction has been limited, but they have met in the Teacher's Lounge once, in which Tulio was instantly attracted to her, but Anita shapeshifted into her lion form, showing him she wasn't interested. After that, Tulio kept his distance. Milo- She and Milo have a difficult relationship, mainly stemming from the fact that they have different views on humanity and are often fighting over Milo's relationship with Jim. Jim- Anita hates the human, plain and simple, and she loathes the fact that Milo is friends with him. Annie- Neither she nor Milo know that Annie has come to Spirit High.﻿